Snipe hunt in Missouri? Bring a shotgun, not a gunny sack

Aug. 16, 2012

Written by

Ken

WHITE

It may only be the middle of August, but with footballs filling the air and schools starting, hunting seasons can’t be too far behind. In fewer than three weeks, hunting seasons for small migratory birds will be opening.

Seasons for snipe, dove, rail and woodcock were set earlier with regulations similar to last fall’s flight.

For doves, the season opens Sept. 1, with a daily limit of 15. The season runs through Nov. 9. Rail and snipe seasons also start Sept. 1, with the rail season ending Nov. 9 with a daily limit of 25 birds, while snipe hunting continues through Dec. 15 with a daily limit of eight. The woodcock season is Oct. 15-Nov. 28, with a daily limit of three. The teal season is Sept. 8-23 with a daily limit of four.

Several seasons ago, while teal hunting with Tom Adams of Jefferson City, we were walking to our blind when a snipe took off in front of Adams and he said, “What in the world was that?”

When I told him it was a snipe, he just laughed and said, “Yeah sure,” which was a normal reaction for anyone who had ever been on a practical-joke snipe hunt with a gunny sack.

There are real birds called snipe, and for the hunters who pursue them, they know just how good the birds are on the table as well as how challenging they are to hit with a shotgun. Those fast-flying migrants can fool hunters who know their zigzag flight is comparable to a darting dove.

My son, David, knows what snipes are because he has hunted them. When a question on an Iowa Basic test asked if a snipe was (a) real bird, (b) an imaginary bird or (c) a piece of cloth, he marked (a). Yet it was graded as incorrect.

David sent a copy of a photo I had taken of him holding a snipe, and the question was dropped from the test the next year.

A couple years ago, a friend called to tell me he had flushed some snipe every day by a small creek on his property. He knew I liked to hunt these migrants, and because the season opened Sept. 1, I grabbed my 28-gauge shotgun and headed to his farm.

An earlier rain had left a sheet of water on a field. The snipes were feeding on worms they were able to reach in the damp ground with their long bills.

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It took several shots before I was able to drop a bird, but after hunting dove, I was ready for its erratic flight. Since the field was within several hundred yards of a road, several vehicles stopped to watch, thinking I was shooting teal.

One man shouted, “Don’t you know the teal season isn’t open?”

Snipe migrate through Missouri each spring and fall, but many waterfowl hunters pass them up, and they are missing some good hunting, as well as excellent food for the table.

Although snipe hunting isn’t as popular as it was years ago, it remains a challenge for hunters who use guns and not sacks to take their birds.

Dove hunters should find good hunting this season, as the population of these fast flying targets is good. As for hunting rails, there are few true rail hunters in the Ozarks.

Terry Hastings of Joplin once told me that you only go rail hunting once. I found out what he was talking about when I tried it with my friend, Jerry Fisher, of Independence.

We traveled to Fountain Grove Wildlife Area near Meadville. It was an early September morning and the temperature was in the 90s, the water was about 2 feet deep, and the weeds were thick, as were the mosquitoes.

There were a few rail around as we plunged through the heat, weeds and water for a bird the size of a blackbird. It’s no wonder the daily limit is 25 because it would take that many to have a meal. After bagging a few birds, we had enough bug bites to last all fall, and we were wet from head to toe.

The teal season should find plenty of birds passing through the state, but without good rains before the opener, water conditions may keep the teal flying south.

As Adams said, “After a hot summer, it’s good to know that hunting seasons and cooler weather are on the way.”